Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed in general to integrated circuit packages and methods of manufacturing same. In one aspect, the present invention relates to an integrated circuit package having through-package circuit connections between opposed sides of encapsulated device packages.
Description of the Related Art
Integrated circuit devices and other types of electronic devices are often encapsulated with molding compound or resin to provide environmental protection and facilitate external connection to the devices. Subsequent to encapsulation, interconnect structures can be built up on one or both sides of the encapsulated devices. For packages having electrical contacts on both top and bottom surfaces, through package vias (TPV) or pre-placed vias (PPV) are typically used to make direct electrical connection between opposed top and bottom side interconnect structures on the package. However, conventional TPV structures are made using an expensive drilling-based process either before or after encapsulation (e.g., laser drilling, metallization filling, polishing, taping, and so on) that introduces complexities to the manufacturing process that have a variety of manufacturing and reliability challenges (e.g., consistent integrity of the through via and reliable connection to the interface). In addition, there are costs associated with the materials, processes, and additional tooling required to form TPV structures which are typically filled with silver particles. There are also challenges to reducing the size and density of TPV and PPV structures due to limitations in the pitch and aspect ratio of structures formed by laser drilling through mold compounds and/or filling high aspect ratio holes with conductive material. For example, FIG. 1 depicts an example integrated circuit package device 1 in which an encapsulant 12 surrounds an integrated circuit die 14 and includes a through package via structure 15 formed to connect first and second interconnect structures 11, 13 on opposite sides of the encapsulant 12. Such conventional TPV structures 15 may have a minimum pitch of 180 um between 100 um diameter holes. As a result, the existing solutions for providing high density through-package via circuit connections are extremely difficult at a practical level.